If safety is the concern, why don't we have autonomous bobsleds and skis?

July 2017 By JOHN PHILLIPS

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From the August 2017 issue

Electric race cars sound like a guy sharpening a dull switchblade in an automatic knife sharpener while riding a high-speed escalator. It is not a sound you ever want to hear from a complex mechanical device. But I’m getting over it, especially as I watch more Formula E races. At C/D, we seem divided on the series’s relevance, but the organizers have acquired a stellar roster of drivers whose ambition and malevolence make for excellent post-race fistfights.

While watching Formula E last year, however, it dawned on me that someone is going to propose autonomous race cars. And guess what? Say hello to Robocar, a 724-hp autonomous racer with a 62-kWh battery pack, built by a London company called Roborace. Its goal is to organize the world’s first driverless racing series. To that end, it has apparently latched on to strong funding and is going about this project correctly, starting not with the George Jetson–looking Robocar but with two cut-down Le Mans prototypes equipped with all the necessary autonomous sensors. Then it tested the cars the world over.

No drivers in the DevBots. No fans apparently watching, either.

More recently, Roborace staged a “grudge match” between its two prototypes—or DevBots, as it calls them—on the Buenos Aires street course. With each lap, the cars better “learned” the track and thus upped their velocities, reportedly to 115 mph. One DevBot swerved to avoid a dog during the event. Alas, toward the race’s end, a DevBot proved that even artificial intelligence can underestimate understeer, as it clouted the wall in a veritable Mardi Gras of carbon-fiber shrapnel, flailing suspension pieces, and a right-front wheel that continued on its own—as if looking for a sentient driver it could hire. At which point the Roborace engineers boasted that DevBot No. 1 had completed the requisite 20 laps and that even the crashed car was a success because “no drivers were harmed.” Plus, one dog’s tail was still wagging. On the other hand, auto racing isn’t so dangerous anymore. The Charlotte Observer reported 520 racing deaths, including 47 spectators, in the last 25 years, none alcohol or texting related. In the same spell, fatalities on public roads amounted to 981,200. Yes, I know, the public was driving many more miles annually, but you see my point.

Anyway, the crux here is whether the planet’s motorsports fans will embrace a driverless car parked in a winner’s circle where champagne is sprayed over AI programmers wearing Rick Perry glasses. I’d wager that half the fascination of automobile racing has always been invested in the eccentric human behind the wheel. Apart from Ferrari fans, most Formula 1 enthusiasts root for specific drivers, not the car’s mechanical recipe. In NASCAR and IndyCar racing, I’m not sure that anyone cares or knows who makes the chassis or engines.

But without drivers, what’s left? I wonder if we’d soon ache for the likes of F1 champ James Hunt frolicking with the race queen 10 minutes before he climbs into his car. And let’s not forget that there are feats a driverless race car will not perform that humans will. Take, for instance, the Busch brothers ramming competitors to exact revenge. At Monaco in the final seconds of qualifying, will a driverless car stage a faux crash to keep its best lap safe from attack? Will DevBots steer themselves 12 feet off the track and into the dirt to make a last-lap pass, as Alex Zanardi did at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca? After the race, will a driverless car stop at the flag stand, stick out a mechanical arm, and grab the checkered flag to wave during a reverse-direction ­celebratory lap? In the press booth, will the victorious programmer say, “I just want to thank our AI platform for handling 24 trillion operations per second” and then Skype with the 15-year-old crew chief, Timmy, who’s in his mother’s basement in Toledo?

Then there’s this: Olympic bobsled racing is dangerous. Shouldn’t we construct autonomous bobsleds? Skiing breaks a zillion legs annually. Why not just fit skis with lidar and ultrasonic sensors and let them hurtle down the mountain by themselves? Why suffer road rash at the Tour de France when an autonomous bike will navigate better than you? Hell, I once got badly pinched in a vicious shopping-­cart collision in a Kroger. Can’t I get a cart that drives itself to collect a box of Trix and then meets me at my car?

In no way am I damning this exercise. For one thing, like CRISPR genetic experimentation, it’s going to happen. No matter what, not too far in the future, a standard race in which 33 cars burn fuel at obscene rates and befoul the immediate atmosphere with tire smoke and arrogant levels of noise . . . well, it won’t be politically correct. And trust me, that is the future, a future that may or may not have both feet in the end zone. I might be ashes in an urn by then. If not, I know people who can arrange it.